by Stone, Naomi
Her mind skittered away, and the ringing of her phone spared her more time on the subject.
“Ms. Torkenson?” a woman asked.
“Yes?” Gloria answered cautiously, wary of the too-frequent phone solicitations.
“It’s Kathleen Pederson.”
“Oh. Hi?” Why would Kathleen be calling her at home?
“I’m sorry to disturb you on a weekend, Ms. Torkenson, but I’ve had some plans change and will be out of town next week, for a conference in Boston. I know you wanted those forms.”
“Oh. Yes.” It took Gloria a second to recall the mundane matter, entirely forgotten in the wake of giant mosquitoes and superhero neighbor boys.
“Well, I tracked them down, and if you’ll meet me this evening before I head to the airport, I can give them to you then.”
“Oh, of course. I’d appreciate it. I don’t have to be anywhere.” It felt pitiful admitting she had no plans for a Saturday night, but she had released Pete from Saturday night date service, and chased away the next contender already. She was pitiful.
“My cousin lives in Boston, and I have to get a couple items I was holding for her from my storage locker. Why don’t you meet me there? It’s reasonably close to where you live. South Minneapolis, isn’t it? Say, in half an hour?”
“Fine,” Gloria said. “It’s good of you to take time out for this. What’s the address?” She jotted it down on the notepad beside her computer.
* * * *
“Hey, Mom.” Greg entered the kitchen, pleased to find Aggie home safe as usual, no strange men in sight, tracing a design onto a swath of brown ultra-suede. “What’s new?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Aggie had a mug of coffee on the table before her and set aside her work to cup her hands around it, sparing him a smile. She gazed off into space.
“Try me.”
“Strangest thing–Oh, do you want some coffee?” She turned back to him, gesturing to the chair opposite her at the table.
He remained standing. “No thanks, but I wanted to borrow your computer.”
“What’s wrong with yours?”
“You’ve got a better graphics package. I have some photos I want to format, maybe print one out.”
“Oh, sure. The laptop’s on that shelf–just lift it down.”
Greg got the computer down and sat, placing it on the table before him. “What’s so strange you don’t think I’ll believe it?”
“Have you listened to the news lately?” Aggie nodded to the TV playing at subdued volume on its shelf.
“I caught a bit.” Greg turned on the Mac laptop, waited for it to boot up. “Something about giant mosquitoes. Some publicity stunt?” Asking a question for which he already had the answer wasn’t exactly lying. Aggie had done it to him all the time when he was a kid, asking whether the elves had been into the cookies or made the mess in the living room when she knew perfectly well he’d done it.
“Giant is putting it mildly.” Aggie took a sip from her mug, her gaze wandering off again. “I was there, but I can hardly believe it myself.”
“You were there?” He looked up from downloading the photos he’d taken yesterday. “Are you okay?” He’d wanted to ask earlier, but not to admit he’d seen her there.
“I’m just fine.” She shook her head. “Just shaken up. I was pretty scared there for a bit, I’ll tell you, but luckily a very nice man carried me to shelter.”
“A nice man, huh?” A man who’d saved his mother, but a man who’d held her too much like Wonder Guy had held Gloria. Greg studied his mother’s face more closely than he had in years. She didn’t meet his eyes. Her cheeks seemed pinker than usual. Was she blushing? “Exactly who is this nice man?”
“His name is Hank. You know my friend, Sue Luddell from the Senior Center? He’s her younger brother. We’ve been seeing a bit of each other lately...” she trailed off, apparently catching the look on his face.
Greg closed his gaping mouth. Of course, his mother would go out with a nice guy if she met one. He should be surprised she hadn’t met one before this.
“Wow,” he said, and managed a smile. “That’s great. I mean, I’m glad you’ve met someone you like, but you can’t know this guy very well.”
“True, we have only been getting to know each other so far. I’m not saying there’s any more to it.” Aggie smiled a smile he’d call coy if she weren’t his mother.
While they talked, Greg pulled up his photos in Photoshop, found the best one, zoomed in on the face of the mystery woman he’d followed from Professor Stevens’ storage unit. He cropped the image. It looked pretty dark. The woman’s features were hard to distinguish. “How do I lighten this and sharpen the contrast?” He turned the screen toward Aggie.
“Go under ‘Image’ to ‘Adjustments’ to ‘Levels.’ Say, what are you doing with a photo of Gloria’s supervisor?”
“What? Gloria’s what?”
“Well, not her direct supervisor, but one of the supervisors in her department. What’s her name now?” Aggie cocked her head. “Pearson? Peterson? Something like that. Kind of a high-powered woman. She made an impression on me.” She made the same disapproving scrunch of her nose she used on discovering mouse droppings in a cupboard. “I met her a couple years ago when Gloria invited me to be her plus one at their office Christmas party, before she met Pete, when she was still new there and hadn’t made friends with people.”
Greg went cold, the chill sweeping through him like a winter storm front. This supervisor, involved in a shady deal with a professor intent on stealing research that could be worth big bucks to a business like ABM, and Gloria’s co-worker... dead.
It didn’t take an understanding of advanced calculus to put these numbers together and he figured long odds on this being coincidence. He had to warn Gloria to stay away from this woman. If she’d listen to him.
Time to confront Professor Stevens. The professor would know how to contact this Pearson or Peterson woman. Greg could connect the man to the data and the server, and connect the server to a contact at ABM. It might not be enough for the police, but it would be enough to get the professor called before the dean, enough to threaten his position at the University.
“What’s wrong?” Aggie recalled him to the moment by lobbing a scrap of her brown ultra-suede at him.
“I have to go.” He stood, leaving the laptop in place.
“Not before you put away your toy, young man.” She nodded to the laptop.
“This is urgent. Gloria may be in trouble.” He logged off the computer and set it back on its shelf, speaking in a rush. “You’ve got to call her.” She might not listen to him, but she’d listen to Aggie. “Tell her to steer clear of this supervisor of hers. The woman’s mixed up in some dirty business with one of our professors who’s stealing student research. It may have something to do with her friend’s death.”
“What?” The color leeched from Aggie’s face like a time-lapse study of the color fading from denim jeans. “It’s not possible. How do you know all this?”
Greg already moved to the door. “I can’t explain it now. Just call her, Mom. Please.”
* * * *
Arriving at the address Kathleen had given her, Gloria pulled up beside the last storage locker on the right and spotted the supervisor’s sporty car coming up the drive behind her. Great timing, she thought, relieved.
It would’ve been spooky to wait alone in this deserted spot now the sun had sunk below the horizon and the surrounding shadows of the half-industrial area had deepened. A few security lights kept the drive between rows of lockers from true darkness, but still. The place seemed desolate with no other visitors at this hour, and only the sounds of traffic from nearby Hiawatha Avenue to cut the solitude.
Gloria exited her car when Kathleen’s pulled up beside her. She waited as the other woman parked, killed her engine and turned to gather something from the seat beside her before emerging from her vehicle.
“Oh, good. Right
on time.” Kathleen greeted Gloria with the tight-lipped nod that passed as her version of a smile.
She’d approached close enough that Gloria took an involuntary step, backing up against her car door at the incursion on her personal bubble. What Kathleen withdrew from her Coach bag looked more like a weapon than the expected documents. Weird looking thing. A stun gun?
Shattering pain spasmed through her limbs before everything went dark.
* * * *
The voice answering her call to Gloria was not Gloria’s voice. Aggie started to apologize for dialing a wrong number, but no, she’d been very careful punching in the keys. The voice might be wrong but the number was right.
“To whom am I speaking?” she asked politely.
“Listen carefully.” The woman’s voice had a much harder edge to it than Gloria’s and she spoke at a rapid clip. “Ms. Torkenson is in danger. She’ll die if Wonder Guy doesn’t come for her. Tell him to follow the creek.”
“What?” What? Gloria in danger? Wonder Guy? This must be some joke. Why would anyone give this message to her? “I don’t know Wonder Guy. How can I tell him anything?”
“Find a way.”
The phone went dead.
* * * *
Gloria woke in a cramped position, bent fetus-like on a hard, lumpy surface. She opened her eyes to a darkness so complete she blinked to make sure they weren’t still closed. Her head throbbed. She strained to swallow against the cloth tied across her mouth, and her limbs protested, aching from the awkward position in which she lay. She tried to sit up and couldn’t manage it. The space felt too confined. Even if she succeeded in bringing her legs under her, her hands were secured together behind her back with what felt like duct tape. She groaned, squirming into an arguably less uncomfortable position.
Gasoline hung thick in the stuffy air. Cloth filled her mouth. She forced herself to breathe slowly, dragging the air in through her nose, fighting off panic lest she choke on her gag. She bucked, trying to sit upright, knocked her legs against some obstruction and banged her head, producing a hollow, metallic thunk. Dammit. She was in the trunk of a car.
What on earth? What had happened? How had she gotten here? Last thing she remembered, she’d set out to meet Kathleen to pick up those forms. Things got fuzzy after that. Had she had some sort of accident? No, that didn’t fit with being bound hand and foot in the trunk of a car. Someone had done this to her.
She struggled to straighten her cramped legs. None of it made sense. As her pulse quickened, Gloria told herself to take deep breaths. It was hard to get enough of the petroleum-stinking air. She had to think. Were the police wrong about whoever had killed Jo? Had the killer come after her now? If the police were right, Jo had interrupted a robbery and there’d be no reason for robbers who’d taken advantage of a momentary lapse in security to return to the scene of their crime. Besides, she hadn’t been at ABM. She’d been meeting Kathleen at a storage facility.
Her head swam from the gasoline fumes. She should have seen it sooner. She’d been too ready to believe the police and their reassuring answers. Jo might have left ABM by the door off the loading bay, but Jo wouldn’t have left without cleaning her mug. Someone had made it look like she’d been on her way out. She’d been killed before she’d ever left under her own power.
Kathleen.
Everything clicked into place. Jo had been checking on those same tax forms the day she was killed. Now Gloria had asked about the forms and here she was, after meeting with Kathleen. Too much of a coincidence. Clearly, Kathleen had something to hide concerning the tax records for those independent contractors. Something vital enough to inspire murder and kidnapping.
It would have been nice to think of all this before falling into the trap. She should’ve known better than to accept the conclusions of the police. Not just because of Jo’s unwashed coffee mug. There’d been that phone call too. Someone purporting to be Jo, calling in sick. What random killers would bother with that bit of deception?
A scuffling noise outside her prison alerted her. Someone nearby. Gloria twisted and bucked, trying to make some noise. She rocked in place, banging her head again in the process, but it made a thump. Knocking legs against what must be a wheel well made another, feebler thump. The small noise she made got lost in the louder, solid chunk of a car door as it slammed shut, then the sound of the engine kicking on.
As the car rolled, Gloria braced herself against flopping around like an imperfectly stowed bag of groceries.
* * * * *
Aggie stared speechlessly at her phone for a long moment after the call ended. She refused to tolerate the very idea of any harm coming to Gloria. She thought instead about what to do next. She had no idea how to contact Wonder Guy. This sounded like a kidnapping. She should call the police, the FBI–someone who knew how to deal with such situations. The woman who’d made the threat obviously had Gloria’s phone. The authorities could track cell phones somehow, couldn’t they?
Aggie dialed 9-1-1.
“Please state the nature of your emergency.”
“It’s–” she hesitated. Was Gloria a missing person? Maybe someone had stolen her phone and was making some kind of joke to claim they had her too. Why would anyone actually kidnap Gloria? She had no money, no influence. Still, they claimed to have her. “Someone’s taken my friend, Gloria Torkenson. They say they’ll hurt her unless Wonder Guy comes to them.”
She couldn’t believe this was happening. The familiar kitchen surrounding her took on a surreal cast. Gloria was almost a daughter to her. Just the idea of losing her was enough to send her heart reeling. Twice in one day, she’d had reason to fear for Gloria’s life. She had to stay focused. Numbly, she answered the operator’s questions, supplying details about the call, her own identity and relationship to Gloria, the circumstances surrounding the situation.
“I’m sorry.” The woman’s brisk manner softened at last. “We have to establish that your friend is not acting under her own volition and is absent under duress before we can treat this as a kidnapping.”
“I told you.” Aggie leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table before her, like her worries had the weight of some solid creature riding on her shoulders. A portly old man maybe, or a baby elephant. She had no strength to shrug it off.
“I told you. Someone else has her phone. A woman. She said Gloria is in danger–she’ll die if Wonder Guy doesn’t come to her.”
“Do you have any idea where Ms. Torkenson intended to go after you last saw her?”
Aggie straightened. “The last I knew she was headed home.”
“We’ll send someone there to look for signs of trouble, and if you give me the number of her cell phone, I’ll start the tracking procedure.”
Aggie gave her Gloria’s number. “Will you, the police, be able to contact Wonder Guy? Get him to help her?”
“We’ll do everything we can, ma’am.”
Aggie frowned as the connection cut out. Not much of an answer.
* * * *
Gloria braced herself against the sides of her prison. She’d grown more or less used to the jouncing after a few initial shocks. The up side of the cramped quarters being she was wedged securely into place.
Given how uncomfortable her position and how terrifying the prospects, it surprised her to find her thoughts turning to Greg instead of dwelling on those discomforts. A more practical person would plot her escape, or at least her next move. Gloria had always admired Kathleen as a role model of the kind of successful businesswoman she wanted to emulate. Kathleen was very practical. She might think of a way out of a fix like this, but Gloria could barely function. Not a single practical move came to mind, and given Kathleen’s most recent behavior, Gloria didn’t want her as a role model anymore.
She’d been unfair to Greg. He’d been her friend forever, one of the best and truest. She should have been more diplomatic. It was as if she didn’t know him at all after all these years. She shouldn’t have been so surprised he’d
turned out to be a superhero. How shallow was she to dismiss such a constant friend as a hopeless geek all these years?
She couldn’t get over it. Even now, she’d start thinking about Greg–old, dependable Greg–and catch herself, remembering how much more he’d revealed hidden behind his golden mask. She’d grown up with him, they’d played together as kids, she’d hung out at his house practically every day, seen him through his gangly teenage years, teased him about his comic books and his other geeky interests. She’d always been fond of him. How had she never noticed he had the potential to be a hero, to look so hot in tights, to kiss like...as if he was made of lightning and thunder and every romantic movie star rolled together?
* * * *
While Greg didn’t follow Penny Hagestad’s Tweets, to her followers it was no secret Professor Stevens of the Computer Sciences department was involved with his grad student to an extent far beyond what the University condoned. Greg had heard about the affair from Eric, who did follow Penny, with an unhealthy degree of interest, and apparently saw no reason not to share what he learned, regardless of how interested his audience might or might not be.
Finding Professor Stevens’ present whereabouts, despite it being a weekend evening after end-of-term, required only a stop at the computer lab and some quick social networking. Penny’s Twitter page revealed how she planned to spend the weekend with her amour at his pied a terre. The department directory supplied the professor’s home address.
The professor’s condo stood on the St. Anthony’s Main bank of the Mississippi, where it had a spectacular view of Nicollet Island and downtown Minneapolis. By this hour, city lights made an abstract, downtown-Minneapolis-shaped design against a night sky grown doubly dark with a thick layer of gathering clouds. The scene lay reflected in shimmering duplicate on the dark water below.
Wonder Guy circled the upper stories of the condo building until he spotted the professor standing on his balcony, one arm around a pretty redheaded grad student.
Greg dove down to land beside him and stand, hands fisted on his hips, playing the costumed superhero role to the hilt. Abandoning his companion, Stevens backed away toward the sliding glass doors to his apartment.